USCTIMES
AUGUST 2016 / VOL. 27, NO.6
GOOD NEIGHBORS
House & Home
Sacred Space
Quorum Busting
Bret Kloos partners with community to research homelessness and affect change. page 4
The university architect and two professors talk campus growth and historic preservation. page 8
Bacteria form communities, too. And talk to each other. No, really. page 18
USC TIMES / STAFF
FROM THE EDITOR USC Times is published 10 times a year for the faculty and staff of the University of South Carolina by the Office of Communications & Public Affairs, Wes Hickman, director.
COMMUNITY MATTERS
Managing Editor Craig Brandhorst Creative Director Bob Wertz Designer Brinnan Wimberly Illustrator Justin Carrier Contributors Dan Cook Chris Horn Page Ivey Steven Powell Adena Rice Photographers Kim Truett Ambyr Goff Printer USC Printing Services Campus correspondents James Raby, Aiken Cortney Easterling, Greenville Shana Dry, Lancaster Jane Brewer, Salkehatchie Misty Hatfield, Sumter Annie Smith, Union Tammy Whaley, Upstate Jay Darby, Palmetto College Submissions Did you know you can submit ideas for future issues of USC Times? Share your story by emailing or calling Craig Brandhorst at craigb1@mailbox.sc.edu, 803-777-3681.
Why did the professor cross the road? To get to the other side of campus. You might not laugh at that joke — it’s not particularly funny — but you can’t deny the underlying truth. The University of South Carolina and the city of Columbia enjoy a close physical relationship, so much so sometimes that it can be hard to tell where one ends and the other begins. None of which is to say we don’t also enjoy a beautiful campus. We do, and we’re not just talking about the Horseshoe. Walk pretty much any direction from the campus core and you’ll pass through leafy greenspace, thoughtful streetscapes and interesting architecture, some historically significant, some brand spanking new. Depending on your path, you might also pass a few hard hat areas and the occasional jackhammer hole. The student body is growing and campus is growing right along with it. But managing growth is never simple. Ask Derek Gruner. As university architect, Gruner guides all new construction, but he is also chief steward for our existing historic structures. In either situation, he has to balance the university’s needs with our commitment to the community. It’s a big job — so big, in fact, that we decided to buy Gruner lunch. In the interest of good conversation, we also invited public historian Robert Weyeneth and architectural historian Lydia Brandt, reserved a table at McCutchen House, tossed out a few philosophical questions and called it a Meet & Three (page 8). There were a lot of takeaways from that conversation, but this may be the biggest: community matters. USC isn’t just a place, after all. It’s also people — the ones who teach, work and go to school here, plus our neighbors in University Hill or Wales Garden, the business owners on South Main and pretty much anybody else in town affected by our decisions. Thus the rest of this issue, which is devoted to the idea of being a good neighbor. That could mean providing arts education to Midlands children or health care to area teens (“Today Tomorrow,” page 14), or improving the lives of the homeless (“House & Home,” page 4). It could also mean working hand-in-hand with the county on projects like the three-phase Greene Street beautification project currently underway west of Assembly Street (cover, End Notes). As Gruner explains, the tree-lined corridor will take us all the way to the Congaree River. When it’s all said and done, it will also tie us that much more closely to the city itself. Why did the professor cross the road? Wait and see.
The University of South Carolina does not discriminate in educational or employment opportunities or decisions for qualified persons on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability, genetics, sexual orientation or veteran status.
No Joke,
CRAIG BRANDHORST MANAGING EDITOR
VOL. 27, NO.6 3
Welcome to the 5-Day Week RETIRING MINDS WANT TO KNOW The Employee Support Program provides online resources to
NOT SO HOT In the June-July issue of USC Times we got a bit of science wrong. “From Hot to Not” was our in-depth look at mechanical engineering professor Jamil Khan’s Heat Transfer Lab, which does some pretty cool research.
help faculty and
Unfortunately, in describing the process known
staff prepare
as two-phase cooling we mistakenly compared
for retirement, including the webinar “Retirement: It’s Not Just about
it to the process used for cooling a car’s engine. We don’t have space here to explain away our bad analogy, but it boils down to this — an editorial oversight.
the Money.” Check it out at deeroakseap. com/memberlogin/, username
Welcome Week will be shorter this year. Residence halls will open to residents Aug. 14-15 and fall classes will begin Aug. 18. “The most compelling reason for shortening the time between move-in and the beginning of classes is that it reduces the amount of students’ unstructured free time,” says Dan Friedman, director of University 101 Programs. “That decreases the chance they will experience boredom or homesickness or engage in risky behaviors.”
and password “USC.” A monthly newsletter, articles, tip sheets and more are also available on the website.
Who, What, When, Where The Fall semester is upon us. Mark your calendars.
MONEY MATTERS
Aug. 10: Early arrival housing opens for students participating in sorority recruitment, members of the Carolina Band and other select populations.
The USC Board of Trustees approved the $1.5 billion budget for the state’s flagship university system that covers fiscal year 2017 operations at eight campuses and Palmetto College. The budget approved by the board includes a 3.25 percent
Aug. 14-15: All residence halls open at 8 a.m. for move-in.
increase in tuition at all campuses as well as state-mandated pay and benefit package increases for employees. The remaining portion of new tuition revenue, combined with enrollment
Aug. 14-21: Welcome Week
growth and $6.5 million in new recurring funding from the state, will be used to address
Aug. 15: First Night Carolina, 9 p.m., Colonial Life Arena
strategic needs like support for academic instruction and the hiring of additional faculty ($10.8 million) as well as academic, student
Aug. 17: Convocation for first-year students, 10 a.m., Colonial Life Arena
and administrative support initiatives ($2.5 million) including law enforcement and safety, library research resources, student success and diversity and inclusion.
Osborne Administration Building
Aug. 18: First day of classes
4 USCTIMES / AUGUST 2016
USC psychologist Bret Kloos is a key player in local efforts to help the homeless. BY DAN COOK
VOL. 27, NO.6 5
W
hen Bret Kloos came to the University of South Carolina in 2003, he wasn’t planning to work on the issue of homelessness — at least not directly. “I wanted to do
housing work,” says the associate professor of psychology, who previously directed a transitional housing program at Yale University. “The distinction in my mind at the time was that homelessness tended to be crisis-focused and emphasized shelters.” Thirteen years later, Kloos is well known as a bridge connecting the university to the Columbia community in the effort to address
RECOGNIZING HOMELESSNESS When it comes to homelessness, stereotypes tend to guide our thinking. There’s a reason for that, according to psychologist Bret Kloos. “The way memory works, something that stands
homelessness, and the partnerships he has established have helped build
out as different becomes more salient. So the people
the foundation for a more holistic, data-driven approach to the issue.
we observe who are homeless — who look disheveled,
But the distinction he once made between short-term crisis management
who might be carrying around a lot of things — they
and a more comprehensive approach still informs his work.
stand out,” he says. Add in the disheveled folks who
As a clinical-community psychologist, he focuses not just on individuals, but also tries to mitigate conditions that give rise to mental health problems. He drills deep into the social environments of people facing housing crises to understand how they fall into mental illness and to help them recover if they already have. His work also leads naturally to the formation of university-community relationships because researchers are dependent upon local homeless-
might also be talking to themselves or otherwise behaving erratically, and we’ve formed an image of the homeless as mentally ill. However, that group is hardly representative of the overall homeless population, many of whom are actually families (approximately 30 percent) or unaccompanied youth (approximately 8-10 percent). Those with serious and persistent mental illness,
services groups for help gathering data. But for such partnerships to work
Kloos says, probably account for 15 to 17 percent
long-term, community groups need to benefit, too.
of the homeless population.
Listen, Learn, Give Back
and mental illness — and it relates directly to housing.
There is, however, a link between homelessness
Kloos already had a grant from the National Institute of Mental Health when he came to USC, but he had to find a way to transfer his research. As part of that effort, he reached out to 17 mental health centers throughout the state and looked at housing environments in an effort to understand the contexts in which people are most likely to thrive. “While we were looking for a way to be helpful and useful, folks were asking us to do things about homelessness in their communities — primarily in the Midlands,” Kloos says. He listened. His team also did research, evaluations and tasks that weren’t part of their funded grant, but that the community partners needed, Kloos recalls. If they were asking local groups to help them gather research, they also wanted to give back. It’s an important lesson Kloos imparts to students. As a graduate student, “you’re so involved in all the readings and the latest literature, and you’re trying to prove yourself,” says Nyssa Snow-Hill, a doctoral candidate in clinical-community psychology who focuses on
“It is probably one of the most cruel games of musical chairs that you can imagine,” Kloos says. “There isn’t enough affordable housing available for folks, and the people who don’t get to that chair — who don’t get to that apartment — have some disadvantage. It might be mental illness, it might be substance abuse, it might be losing a job, it might be a domestic violence situation where they have to leave.” Continuing the metaphor, Kloos explains the categories researchers often use to understand different homeless populations. The transitionally homeless, who account for about two-thirds of the population, “are folks who are at the edge and couldn’t make it to the chair in time.” The episodically homeless “are just walking around the circle way too much — a little bit of something knocks them off, and they might be homeless five or six times in their lives.” Then there are the chronically homeless, who,
unaccompanied youth and works closely with United Way of the Midlands.
although they comprise only about 15 percent of
What works better, she says, is learning “what the community wants and
the homeless overall, are the people we tend to see
where I can fit in with those goals.”
on the streets.
6 USCTIMES / AUGUST 2016
One person who connected with Kloos from the start was Anita Floyd, now at United Way of the
to take the partnership to the next level. The resulting 54-page report
Midlands. Floyd, who was previously
“Family Homelessness in Richland
with the university’s Institute for
County,” authored by Kloos, Snow-
Families in Society, appreciates the
Hill and another doctoral candidate,
work Snow-Hill is doing for United
Douglas Archie, was released in May.
Way — and credits Kloos with
One of the study’s key findings was
laying the groundwork for placing
that, contrary to accepted wisdom
students with United Way. “It’s
in some sectors of the homeless-
not a cattle call,” says Floyd. “It’s,
services community, persistent
‘I have a student who has these
generational homelessness is
skills’ — and he is in touch with
rare. In fact, the vast majority of
us enough to know what we are
families who use homeless services
working on.”
do so only once. The study also
Homeless No More
documented wide gaps in available
FAMILY HOMELESSNESS IN RICHLAND COUNTY
homeless services for families, with
A report led by Bret Kloos and released
Taking a thoughtful approach
the demand for affordable housing
helps both the university and its
outstripping supply by a factor
Richland County between 2004 and
community partners. That’s been
of 10 to 1.
2015. The findings have gone a long
especially true recently for the newly renamed Homeless No More. Founded in 1989 as the
Sauls says the report has given her group the evidence needed to expand into several new areas. In
Trinity Housing Corporation, the
addition to its transitional housing
organization launched the St.
program at St. Lawrence Place,
Lawrence Place family shelter in
Homeless No More plans to focus
1991 to offer families a place to stay
on rapid re-housing for families that
for up to two years while working
have experienced a one-time crisis
with every member of the family.
and on affordable housing.
The approach has been lauded as
“It’s kind of the mindset of
in May looks at family homelessness in
way toward dispelling some stereotypes — including the myth of persistent, generational family homelessness. The data also points to better ways to prioritize efforts and allocate resources. A few key findings:
The vast majority of those
using HUD-funded housing services — 81.8 percent — did so only once over the entire 2004-2015 period.
an example of best practices —
if you put somebody in a nice
and yet, says director Lila Anna
neighborhood, the environment
Sauls, “we saw that our families
will help pull them up,” Sauls says.
seeking HUD-funded housing services
were doing everything right and
Homeless No More is also working to
experienced persistent housing
they still couldn’t afford rent once
build what Sauls calls a “community
they left us.”
bridge” to bring Columbia’s 20-plus
That realization led to a new approach. “Our board stepped back
homeless service providers together around one table once a month.
and said, ‘Wait a minute, we need
In determining how to refocus
to do more than just St. Lawrence
her organization’s priorities, Sauls
Place — but we have to know why
says she couldn’t have had a better
we are doing it.’ And we called Bret,
collaborator than Kloos.
because at that point we had to have data.” Sauls had known Kloos for years.
“Bret gets it,” she says. “So you’re not just sitting across from someone saying, ‘Here’s what I think
His students have worked with her
we’ve got to go look at.’ Because he
on various research projects, and
has a background in this, he pushed
they had sat around the same tables
me to investigate areas that I might
discussing the city’s homeless issues.
not have gone in — but at the
But as she looked at expanding her
bottom was that data.”
organization’s mission, she needed
Only 3 percent of those
insecurity, defined as three or more episodes averaging 4.5 months.
The demand for affordable
housing and homeless services in Richland County far exceeds the supply. Key needs include more affordable housing and rapid re-housing options for those who experience a one-time crisis.
VOL. 27, NO.6 7
"Much of the university’s economic impact is in terms of employment or patents, but it’s also in cost savings — because we have people helping agencies do their work better. That is definitely part of how we think about how we give our service to Columbia." - BRET KLOOS
Lab Work and Action In July, Kloos became director of the clinical-community psychology doctoral program. In that role, he will not only guide the education of doctoral candidates, but also build on the program’s many relationships within and outside of the university. “We are a research-focused program that is interested in using research to promote change — so, we are an applied field that takes research very seriously,” Kloos says. The program is accredited by the American Psychological Association, which adds to the requirements of students, but Kloos and his colleagues go beyond the training model of the APA. “What is unique about our training model is this idea of asking questions more broadly — taking in perspectives from public health, women's and gender studies, social work and anthropology, political science, geography — and finding ways where we can challenge people’s assumptions, finding ways of supporting community groups that are doing work and supporting interventions that are sustainable over the long term.”
Two of the primary vehicles for
and social work, that have contributions
this work are the Housing & Adaptive
to make to people who are addressing
Functioning Research Lab and the
homelessness — the business school
Housing & Homelessness Action Research
and nonprofit management, humanities,
Network, which is co-chaired by Floyd.
education, communications and
The HAF Lab is essentially the research side of Kloos’ work, where he and other researchers incorporate ideas from social
marketing. And hopefully we can connect to community resources as well.” Right now, the HHARN effort is in its
ecology and community psychology to
infancy. The site is still being developed,
investigate the relationships between
and it’s being operated by volunteers.
housing environments and adaptive
But as with all of his work, Kloos hopes
functioning. Their target includes people
to make the effort sustainable over the
facing challenging circumstances such
long term. “Maybe if we get a big grant
as mental illness, family homelessness,
we could fund it for a couple of years, but
or displacement by natural disaster or
then the grant ends and it goes away,” he
recent immigration.
says. “So we want to do it in a different
The Housing & Homelessness Action
way: We want to focus on a smaller, leaner
Research Network (HHARN) is focused
network where people link to a particular
on making connections between people
project.”
who want to help. As part of the project,
It can be a challenge to connect
which is still being developed, students
the university and the community in a
conducted an exhaustive search of
meaningful way, but Kloos brings a high
faculty and staff bios and invited those
level of determination.
whose work is in any way related
“‘Bridge’ is exactly the word I would
to homelessness to be included in
use,” Floyd says. “Having spent a lot of
the network.
time at USC, it’s not an easy thing to do.
“That’s really the vision of the HHARN,”
It’s a big place with multiple interests.
Kloos says. “There are so many resources
He is very good at being consistent in an
on campus, more than just psychology
applied and mutual way.”
T
8 USCTIMES / AUGUST 2016
MEET&THREE
This month’s three:
ROBERT WEYENETH, Professor of history
SACRED SPACE
BY CRAIG BRANDHORST
As an urban campus, the University of South Carolina intersects with the city at every turn. Student housing rubs shoulders with family residences, small businesses nestle up to university towers and busy streets graze the campus core. Factor in two centuries of architecture, a complicated public history and a need to keep pace with a growing student body, and university architect Derek Gruner has his work cut out. In July, USC Times invited Gruner and two colleagues to McCutchen House for a frank lunchtime conversation about historic preservation, campus growth and our campus’s place in the larger community.
USC is an urban campus. Technically, it stops and starts every time we cross the street, and yet it doesn’t feel so clearly defined sometimes. Let’s start by getting each of you to define campus as you perceive it. LYDIA BRANDT, Assistant professor of art history
DEREK GRUNER, University architect
DEREK: Columbia was laid out in the 1780s
with 100-foot wide right-of-ways, with the exception of Assembly and Senate, which were 150. Those are more or less intact, and that’s fairly wide relative to other cities. So technically when you step into the right of way, yes, you’re in the City of Columbia realm, but I typically don’t see it that way. When you have campus property and spaces that are important to students on both sides of the road, from a design perspective we think of the roads as part of campus.
ROBERT: I had a student in a graduate seminar
last semester who was interested in documenting the African-American experience on campus, so we had a discussion about this. Well, it was pretty easy, given her focus. It’s everything that the modern campus is. So it’s the former Ward 1, the African-American neighborhood where the Coliseum and the Koger Center are. It’s the remnants of Booker T. Washington High School. It’s the Florence Benson equalization school. She took what I think is the most capacious and inclusive definition of campus. LYDIA: Physical boundaries at an urban campus
are fluid, and race is a huge part of that — African-Americans have perceived the boundaries of our campus very differently because of their experiences at its edge. But I think we’re at a
VOL. 27, NO.6 9
very interesting moment. Our students walk all the way from private housing on Pulaski, past Thirsty Fellow and Darla Moore, to the historic core of campus, and a lot of them think they’re on campus the entire time. DEREK: The relevant measure should be,
“Do I feel safe crossing the road?” “Is this road beautifully landscaped?” “Are cars traveling at an appropriate speed?” That’s what should matter to students these days. Implicit in all this is the idea of community. Campus is a place, but it’s also people. It’s the students and faculty, it’s the neighbors. Bob, you mention Ward 1, which was absorbed by USC. What do we do now to be good neighbors? ROBERT: The first step is to acknowledge the
past, in my view. Yes, we are a community, variously defined, but there are also past communities, and not just African-American residents of Ward 1. East campus was an upper middle class residential area. Several years ago some folks from that neighborhood — it wasn’t called University Hill yet — came to us and said, “We’d like to put our buildings on the National Register of Historic Places.” We were successful, but in doing the research I came to appreciate just how much the university had acquired to create the east campus. After WWII the university needed to expand, like most American universities at that time,
and they looked seriously at moving the university out to Garner’s Ferry Road, where the medical school is today. They decided not to abandon downtown and the historic Horseshoe, but in making that decision, other decisions followed. It’s easy to be critical of geographic expansion, whether at University Hill or Ward 1, but there’s context for understanding it. My impression, by the way, is that President Sorensen did a lot while living on University Hill — while not living in the president’s house on campus — to repair those relations. Derek, what’s your take on our history with University Hill? DEREK: There was a phenomenon of rap-
id growth that most state universities went through. When you look at our enrollment going back to 1805, the spike in enrollment is unbelievable in the 1960s and ’70s, with the Baby Boomers and the G.I. Bill. Thirty-five percent of square footage on campus was built in the ’60s and ’70s, even though we have a 200-year history. And if you look at what was happening downtown, there just wasn’t much sympathy towards historic buildings, and I think the university was doing the same thing. We needed land, we needed space.
’90s, when we engaged Sasaki for our master plan, they said, “Celebrate and maintain adjoining residential neighborhoods.” That’s why future growth was directed west toward the river and toward the south on land we already own. The neighborhoods to the east and southeast are now considered sacred edges of campus. We’re sitting in a building that was at one point on the chopping block, right? DEREK: McCutchen, as I recall, was in partic-
ularly dire condition by the 1970s. It’s almost a nightmare scenario — at least for me, as an architect — to think what would have happened if this building had been demolished, not just in terms of what we would have lost, but also what might have replaced it. We didn’t make the mistake that some campuses did, where they constructed large modern buildings in the campus core because they had a space demand. You can go to a lot of campuses and see really strange juxtapositions, not just in scale but in the eras of architectural style. LYDIA: I do think that when McKissick was
built, that probably stuck out more to folks then than it does now. It’s much grander and more sophisticated. DEREK: The scale is larger, but the building is
We deal with the neighborhoods now in a much more respectful way. I’m sure some of the neighbors might still take some issue with that statement, but in general I think we do. In the
beautifully detailed. And that was the 1940s? DEREK: 1940. The last building constructed
on the Horseshoe before that was a wing of Harper-Elliott built in 1848, so it had been almost 100 years. ROBERT: I’ve often thought of it as preserva-
McCutchen House
tion through poverty, sort of a variation on the Charleston story. The first building constructed after the Civil War was Davis, in 1909. Before that we didn’t have the money. But the ’70s were a tough period, as Derek suggests. I believe that was also the time that the university acquired Booker T. Washington High School and used some of the bricks to pave the Horseshoe walkways. That’s another story of seeing race in space. I would hope that sort of thing would never be repeated. It says a lot about the period,
10 USCTIMES / AUGUST 2016
but then hopefully it’s a reminder of how far we have come.
This gets back to Bob’s comment about racial history.
LYDIA: It’s interesting. Choosing not to demo,
ROBERT: Well, we’ve done an excellent job
not to build, sort of fetishized the historic campus. This was common at the time, preserving the historic core. It made it more closed, more sacred. Here, it allowed the university to go south, go east, go west and do these mini campuses to back up against it. That’s relatively common where you see this preservation by poverty phenomenon. You could not build and could not build, and then suddenly you had to build so much, so fast — preserving the historic core was a way to say, “Hey, we’ve been here the whole time. We might have been under the radar, but we’ve been here.” Preserving one space almost gives you permission to say another space, say Ward 1, doesn't need to be preserved.
marketing the historic charm of the Horseshoe to potential students. We have not done a very good job talking about the narrative of race and space on campus. But we do seem to make more informed decisions. And there are a lot of criteria. It’s not just “tear down or restore.” There are degrees of restoration, right? Derek, I know a lot of tough decisions went into the renovation of Hamilton College, for example. DEREK: You try to balance a functional
demand with a variety of other considerations.
"It was never my intention that my work would come to focus on African-American heritage preservation, but that has been a theme throughout."
When we renovate a building it usually hasn’t been renovated in 20 to 30 years. Teaching methodology changes, function changes. Then there’s preservation — what can be salvaged — and there’s budget. Hamilton was built for the Navy ROTC during WWII, and part of it was a gymnasium, one of the few surviving examples of a WWIIera gymnasium in the state. There was some consideration by the Department of Archives and History as to whether it was appropriate to change that space, but they were seeing it only from the preservation perspective. We were looking at it from the function perspective as well. We desperately needed classroom space, and the rest of Gibbes Green is all academic classroom space. So we added a floor within the building. We didn’t need a gym space with a 30-foot ceiling. But I think we did a very good job preserving the integrity of the exterior skin. We refurbished the windows, we didn’t replace them, we didn’t add windows that would disrupt the fenestration. We took out the gymnasium floor, refurbished it and put it back in throughout the building — and there’s an interpretive panel in the lobby. In the end, the project won a preservation award from Historic Columbia. LYDIA: We put so much pressure on campuses,
almost more than any other landscapes, except maybe government landscapes. At the same time, these buildings serve a function. Nobody’s going to be happy all the time, and not everyone is going to be happy in the end. One goal is to always try to obtain more knowledge,
VOL. 27, NO.6 11
"Getting students to think
so that we can at least make informed decisions, knowing that we can’t keep this place in a glass bubble if it’s to remain relevant.
differently about a place that they may have taken for granted, deepening their connection to campus — it’s bigger than the
ROBERT: We’ve sort of been assuming that
preservation is a given, but we’re really at a special moment, I think. I’ve been here 24 years, and Derek is the first campus architect that I’ve gotten to know. The fact that he and Lydia are here asking these types of questions is unprecedented. When the university decided to put money into restoring the campus wall, Derek reached out to both Lydia and me and said, “Would your students like to see some of the hands-on restoration work?” That kind of thing never happened before. Stepping outside the Horseshoe, we see modern buildings that could soon qualify for historic designations, based simply on their age. LYDIA: Absolutely. We have to develop a whole
new set of criteria to evaluate these buildings. The city is faced with this, too. I was at the Design/Development and Review Commission meeting just last night and saw a midcentury modern building go up for discussion. There were comments about integrity, “You can’t take down this wall,” “You can add to it, but you can’t take things away from the original design.” These are considerations we take for granted on the Horseshoe, but they’re just as important for a building from 1960 as they are for a building from 1860. DEREK: Midcentury Modern architecture
doesn’t have that romantic appeal to the untrained eye that some older buildings have. So much of it is uninspired copies of what was coming out of Europe at the time. Consequently, those buildings have an image problem. There’s something worse about a bad midcentury modern building than a bad 19th-century Federal-style building. LYDIA: Part of the problem with midcentury
institutional buildings, especially on a campus, is the buildings are really over-scaled, because they were serving this incredible rush of new students. They were not contextual. That was part of the idea. Or, they would be contextual in subtle ways that only somebody with a certain
cliché of the light coming on."
type of training would see. On top of that, the whole idea of modern planning often includes these wide promenades, which feel very empty after you’re on a landscape like the Horseshoe. DEREK: Which is built on more of a
human scale.
We’re dealing with a project on south campus — might as well bring it up — called Campus Village. The university is looking to redevelop that area in a way that is more consistent with our current design guidelines. That means razing some buildings, and those buildings are not entirely without merit as representatives of the "Brutalist" design era.
LYDIA: The buildings are kind of tough to love
sometimes, and then they were all built under a budget really fast. So they’re not always the highest quality, whether they’re a copy or a thoughtfully designed modern building. They’re not always meant to last. But then we do have some remarkable structures from that era — DEREK: We have some interesting examples in
Columbia and on campus, yes. Thomas Cooper, certainly. Designed by Edward Durrell Stone. Would that be a criterion for saving a building? The fact that it was designed by the guy who built the Kennedy Center and Radio City Music Hall? DEREK: I’ll give you an example of an Edward
Durell Stone building that apparently wasn’t considered worth saving. Edward Durrell Stone also did the Honeycombs. So what are the criteria? DEREK: One consideration is certainly, “Was
it by a notable architect?” Another would be, “Do the materials represent that era well?”
LYDIA: You want to make informed decisions
before you start picking which ones to demolish, which ones to save. DEREK: Lydia’s class this spring did just an
exquisite study of the midcentury buildings of south campus — Cliff Apartments and Bates House and so on. I’ll never forget standing next to Bates when one of her bright-eyed students, who had naturally fallen in love with Bates through the class, singled me out as someone who could potentially change the course of the building’s destiny. It was delightful, frankly, that she cared so much. About that class — your students researched the architecture on the south side of campus. They surveyed a few buildings that are slated for demolition, right? LYDIA: Yes. Teaching preservation is not just
teaching this style, this style, this style. It’s learning how to advocate and make important decisions, which can be very subjective or sometimes very political. For me, the best model is to put students in a situation where they have to pick a side. They realize really quickly that that’s very hard. That makes for a richer educational
12 USCTIMES / AUGUST 2016
experience. South campus was so interesting because there are real decisions being made right now. DEREK: I do want to give Lydia’s students their
due. They pointed out a few subtle details that I frankly hadn’t noticed, and that can influence the development to come. For example, the somewhat idiosyncratic way the windows are organized on Bates House and how that reveals the functions behind the building’s skin. I’d like to make sure that a little bit of that is reflected in the design of what replaces it. ROBERT: Students never really appreciate the
degree to which teaching is a two-way street, that we get something out of it, too. DEREK: Sometimes to renovate a building such
as Bates would be just too expensive. We have examples both ways. I advocated to try to save the old law center because I thought it could be adapted to a modern classroom space more economically than building a new structure. Numerous studies objectively confirmed that opinion, so that’s the course we’re taking. ROBERT: Does USC have a preservation plan? DEREK: When Lydia first came here, she men-
tioned the idea of a formal preservation plan, but it hasn’t been a priority yet. I feel like now it is, and the catalyst is this midcentury conversation. All of our 19th-century buildings are on
the list to be protected, but it’s time for us to define some criteria for the midcentury buildings, not just to justify removal but so that we can also more ardently support or advocate for the ones we think should be saved. We also want to take a balanced look at preservation instead of being strictly romantic or economical.
important building — the reading room is, bar none, our finest interior space. It’s an exquisite example of Greek Revival architecture. But I stick with what I originally said. There’s a certain democracy in the way that these buildings form a whole that’s much greater than the sum of their parts.
LYDIA: And it’s not just a matter of demolishing
Outside the Horseshoe, I have a great fondness for the War Memorial. When you study all the influences — the Greek, Roman, Egyptian, the Art Deco — it’s an amazing building, and that upstairs interior is probably the second finest interior on campus. It’s so well preserved. Davis College is also important because it heralded a rebirth of architecture on campus. We had gone almost 50 years without building anything, if you can imagine that, and then along comes Davis at the height of the Beaux-Arts period when architects are pulling details from ancient Greece and Rome. As a result, the buildings in Gibbes Green are more ornate. Thomas Cooper Library is our finest example of midcentury modern architecture, without question.
buildings but also watering buildings down to the point where they lose their sparkle. Hamilton, for example, was not watered down to the point where it lost its integrity, even though a lot of changes were made. We need to have that kind of discussion about all these midcentury buildings. Do you guys have favorite buildings on campus? And maybe let’s think outside the Horseshoe, which we all seem to agree is now sacred space. DEREK: I’ll have to think about that, but let me
say one thing about the Horseshoe. The truth is, no one building on the Horseshoe truly stands out. That’s the beauty of the Horseshoe. If we’re being honest, most of the buildings are not architectural icons — they’re just not. If you’re looking for great examples of Federal or Greek Revival architecture, these individual buildings are fairly austere. Their power is that they frame this perfectly proportioned green space. McKissick is a powerful presence, of course, and the South Caroliniana Library is a tremendously
LYDIA: Thomas Cooper is awesome, and the
details have survived. The gold medallions in the curtains are so Edward Durrell Stone — you see that in the Kennedy Center and other buildings he designed. They just need a little shine. And the axis is extremely formal — it’s a temple on a platform, it’s built into a hill which allows it to be big but to appear like a one- or two-story building from the street. That’s what a lot of
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university libraries were doing in the 1960s. When you think about the hulking mass of McKissick, which had been the library, Thomas Cooper has a really different feel. But I really love Bates. My students helped me understand it. Unless you live on south campus, you don’t spend much time down there. But when you think about its height — that height was a way to visually connect that whole area back to the main campus. ROBERT: I love structures that are hiding in
plain sight. Clearly the slave quarters in the president’s garden has gotten attention in the past few years, but the campus wall is the largest slave-built structure on campus and yet it’s invisible to most people. Students use it as a bulletin board across from Russell House. So I don’t have a single favorite building but there are so many stories that are interesting to me as a historian. I believe you can tell the history of a nation, of a state, of a university campus through the built environment. If someone were to conduct another roundtable in 50 years, what would you hope they would admire about what’s being built today?
better or for worse based on the decisions we’re making. Having said that, people always ask what I think should be done. My response is always, “It’s not up to me, it’s up to the community,” whether that’s defined as the faculty, students and staff, or the Columbia community as a whole. DEREK: We have to ask, “What will our values
be in 50 years?” For instance, the need for a personal car. Cars have an enormous impact on the built landscape, the way we think of buildings and the streets. We’re starting to more fully embrace walking and biking, taking shuttles, and I have to think that in 50 years that will be one of our hightest values. One detriment at Bates is that there’s about five or six acres of surface parking. It’s an asphalt wasteland. What’s going to take the place of all that asphalt? Green space, courtyards, things that we have come to value in our master plan. We want you to be able to take a walk that you look forward to and that is pleasant. I hope the Campus Village project achieves that. Lydia — and I say this a little bit tongue in cheek — will we look back in 50 years at the one surviving example of a parking garage?
ROBERT: We’re being tested right now as to
what we will do with the slave quarters, and with telling the story of the Horseshoe as a landscape of slavery. Much will be made for
"When I see students taking tours and being exposed to this place, the emotion is never lost on me. It’s just as powerful and evocative today as when I first stepped on this campus. It puts all the challenges in perspective."
LYDIA: [laughing] I do think that there is some
reason to nominate some parking garages to the National Register. And parking lots were
photographed for publicity in the 1950s and ’60s. That was a sign that you had made it as a modern college. But to answer the earlier question, I hope we look back and see that we built good relationships between the university and the city. Development on campus is moving very quickly, but what I see is thoughtful and well considered. There’s a strategy. The conversations are good. I worry more about the development in the city to support the growth of the university, especially with transportation. Crosswalks, sidewalks — how students get to campus is a really big concern. But I’m very optimistic that we’re starting to have more conversations about that. Last question. All three of you have challenging jobs. What gives you the most satisfaction? LYDIA: Students spend so much time on
campus, and I think they take so much of it for granted, just as they might have taken the neighborhood or town they came from for granted. I find great satisfaction in getting them to pivot and look at it differently, to think beyond the nostalgia they will feel when they graduate. If they can think critically about this place, then they can think more critically about the neighborhood or town where they will live later. ROBERT: Being able to undertake important
real-world projects that have contributed to the university, to Columbia, to the state. I’m very proud of the public history program. I really think it’s one of the crown jewels of the university. DEREK: Being charged with being a good
steward for 200-plus years of construction. That’s the daunting responsibility that keeps me up at night. It becomes the measure of your life. I spent the first half of my career in the private sector, and the reason I was intrigued by the university is that I wanted to be able to think about things from a campus perspective, where everything is related to everything else in some way — not just the architectural forms but the history, the legacy, all the intangibles that come with this magnificent place. T
14 USCTIMES / AUGUST 2016
TODAY TOMORROW USC FACULTY AND STUDENTS ENRICH THE LIVES OF MIDLANDS CHILDREN AND PROVIDE CRITICAL SERVICES TO AREA TEENS BY CHRIS HORN AND PAGE IVEY
LOCAL COLOR By the time art education students take Minuette Floyd’s course in school art programming, they’ve already logged 60 hours observing K-12 art classes in area schools — and they’re itching to design their own. They get that opportunity through the Young Artists Workshop, an art enrichment program offered to children ages 5 to 18 for seven consecutive Friday afternoons after school each spring and fall. “These aren’t merely craft classes; our art education students get to think deeply about topics they want to help the younger students explore,” says Floyd, who began teaching the course in 1998. “If someone has a theme of ‘taking care of our world,’ for instance, then all of the lesson plans will address pollution or sustainability or related topics.” The classes involve drawing, painting, sculpture, fiber arts, printmaking, ceramics and other media, and each class is led by an art education major. Students often pair up and take turns teaching the classes. The final class is devoted to a public exhibition in McMaster. Students come from public and private schools as well as the homeschool community. The Young Artists Workshop typically draws about 60 students, although up to 100 have enrolled in past sessions. “It depends on how many art education majors I have enrolled in my class as to how many kids we can accommodate,” Floyd says. The K-12 students get exposed to a range of art techniques and artists, and some later enroll at USC as art majors. The USC students get feedback on their fledgling efforts as teachers before beginning the more formal process of student teaching the next semester. “They get their feet wet in learning about pedagogy, classroom management and course design,” Floyd says.
SPREADING THE WORDS
What started in 2000 as an initiative to inspire a greater appreciation for poetry among Midlands teens has evolved into a broad creative writing program for third- through fifth-graders called Split P. Split P harnesses the collective talents of M.F.A. students who talk to their young audience about creative writing, nonfiction, fiction and poetry. About 15 participated in the program this past year, regularly visiting four area elementary schools. “A lot of our students are exploring what they want to do and where they want to go with their degrees,” says Liz Countryman, a writer-in-residence in the M.F.A. program who directs the Split P project. “It’s good for them to get to the heart of what they care about and to share it with a young audience.”
And the activities are designed with the kids in mind. “They might bring a piece of flash fiction or a poem or a piece of music or photographs to prompt discussion in the class, then introduce the kids to a writing exercise,” says Countryman. “They have to make it simple and direct to connect to the kids.” Of course, beginning M.F.A. students often don’t have much experience in teaching creative writing, Countryman says, but “they have a lot of eagerness to share this thing they’re so passionate about. It’s also a chance for the kids to meet a real writer, perhaps for the first time and at an age when they have so much energy and enthusiasm.”
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THE POSITIVE PATH
Getting into legal trouble while still in high school can have a devastating effect on your future. The Women’s Well-Being Initiative, a community engagement arm of the Women’s and Gender Studies Program, participates in two Midlands programs to help these young people — especially young women — avoid the stigma of a record. “The relationship between the University of South Carolina and the Juvenile Arbitration Program has had a positive influence on the lives of many youngsters,” says Kathryn Barton, a former volunteer and now director of the Juvenile Arbitration Program in the Lexington County Solicitor’s Office. “I just can’t say enough about what USC has done for our programs.” The Juvenile Arbitration Program was started more than 30 years ago and has been duplicated by local prosecuting offices across the state. USC started working with the Juvenile Arbitration Program about 11 years ago. “These initiatives provide youth the opportunity to engage with others in the community, with the advantage that they do not have a first offense on their record if they successfully complete the arbitration requirements,” says DeAnne Messias, a professor in USC’s College of Nursing and co-founder and director of the Women’s Well-Being Initiative. The community arbitrators help determine students’ “punishment,” which may involve making retribution to their victim, attending anger
management class or doing community service, for example. In some cases, female offenders participate in a four-week art program run by Olga Ivashkevich, a professor in the School of Visual Art and Design. USC graduate and undergraduate students assist with the class, giving students a chance to work with at risk youth. The Women’s and Gender Studies faculty received an ASPIRE grant from the USC Office of Research to collect and analyze available data and found that the young women who participated in the USC program have a lower rate of recidivism than others who are processed through the courts. A second program operated out of Brookland-Cayce High School, also in Lexington County, works with both boys and girls who have committed a legal offense at school — typically fighting — and are facing adjudication through the court system. The students attend an eight-week after-school program where they learn about their options and making better life choices. Along with drug and alcohol abuse information, conflict resolution lessons and healthy relationship learning, they also talk about careers and goals. “This is not about being punished,” Messias says. “This is about learning. They learn the ability to express themselves in a better, positive way.”
WHAT’S IN YOUR SNACK? Parents of young children have a lot on their plates. Making sure their kids’ after-school and summer camp snacks are appropriately nutritious can sometimes fall pretty far down the list. Luckily, keeping an eye on children’s nutrition and exercise in South Carolina is job one for Michael Beets, an associate professor of exercise science at USC. “Our job is to say to after school and summer camp providers, ‘Look, in terms of nutrition, here’s where you are with serving snacks, and here’s where the standards are asking you to go,” Beets says. “We’re here to help.’” His research group in the Arnold School of Public Health has won four grants from the National Institutes of Health to promote healthier eating and physical activity among school-age children. The team is currently working with school- and YMCA-operated after-school programs, many of them in the Midlands, to help them meet national guidelines for nutrition. “That means serving water instead of sugary drinks and providing fruit and whole grains,” Beets says. “In five years, we’ve worked with more than 150 after-school programs in South Carolina to assist them in serving better snacks.” Beets’ group has even helped snack providers find discounts from grocery stores and other vendors so that they can stay within budget while providing more nutritious food. The challenge is when an after-school program or summer camp operator has subcontracted the job of providing snacks and has no control over what’s being served. “Some school districts serve the same snacks and meals for every school and don’t want to make a change because they’re meeting minimum federal nutrition standards. The thing is, it’s the minimum — it could be better,” Beets says. “Therein lies the crux of the issue. The more I work with adults who work with kids, the more I find that decisions adults make about the well-being of children is often not for the benefit of the children but for the convenience of adults.”
16 USCTIMES / AUGUST 2016
88 KEYS TO MUSIC APPRECIATION Some kids take to the piano like young Beethovens. Many more clang on the keys before moving on to other pursuits. All are welcome at the School of Music’s second annual Fall Festival for Young Piano Players, Oct. 29. The free half-day event, which attracted 60 children in 2015, is designed to promote interest in the instrument and foster connections between local piano teachers and the community. Children ages 5 to 12 are grouped according to age and musical proficiency, and then move through various activities designed to promote creativity and improvisation. “We try to capitalize on the innate curiosity of the child,” says Sarah Ernst, an assistant professor of piano and piano pedagogy and director of the Center for Piano Studies. “They’re thinking, ‘I know these keys make sound, but how? What are those pedals? What’s it made of?’ We try to engage that curiosity so that even kids who have no musical background will have fun at the festival.” Parents get a sense of whether their child is really interested in learning music. Children get hands-on experience with pianos and have an opportunity to make music, perhaps for the first time. “One of our fundamental beliefs is that every child is a musician. Even the youngest can understand rhythm and basic music patterns, long versus short notes, high versus low,” Ernst says. “Using just one finger and hitting only black keys, they can make some beautiful music.” The festival ends with a recital presented by students and teachers, but for those kids who discover their inner Beethoven, the day’s events are really just a prelude. “It’s kind of unique to be in a facility that can accommodate this kind of programming,” Ernst says. “We have this big recital hall and all these classrooms that we can use.”
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SPECIAL CASES
Dr. Julie Anderson
For parents of children born with complex medical needs, life can be overwhelming. Fortunately, there is the Palmetto Health Special Care Center, a pediatric practice that specializes in treating chronic illnesses, rare genetic conditions and other extraordinary medical issues. “There is no other facility in Columbia that treats only special-needs children,” says Dr. Sylvia Brook, one of two pediatricians who staff the center operated by Palmetto Health-USC Medical Group. “Neonatal intensive care units are now discharging patients with conditions that years ago wouldn’t have been discharged home.” That means many children with feeding tubes, ventilators, tracheostomies and other conditions that require sophisticated attention are being cared for by family members. The Palmetto Health Special Care Center, formerly called the Medically Fragile Children’s Program, treats patients and provides ongoing education for their families. “We do CPR, seizure and first-aid training,” says Dr. Julie Anderson, Brook’s physician partner at the center. “We try to give them a sense of comfort and perspective in knowing that they’re not alone, that other families we serve have dealt with the same conditions and are doing OK.” The Special Care Center is assisted by the physicians of the School of Medicine’s Department of Pediatrics. The physicians participate in educating nursing students as well as medical and pharmacy residents and students. Collaboration with pharmacy residents has been especially helpful. “It’s good for us and for them,” Brook says. “We have to get a little creative sometimes, and it helps to have their input.” The center draws from as far away as Orangeburg, Manning, Rock Hill and other communities within an hour’s drive of Columbia. “We help families navigate the school systems and steer them to any therapies they might need,” Brook says. “As overwhelming as an illness or condition is, getting connected to the right resources can make a huge difference.”
NOT YOUR MOTHER’S OB/GYN
It looks like an ordinary waiting room — earth-tone furniture and a smattering of magazines — but for female teens, there is definitely something different here. Welcome to the Teen Clinic, staffed by OB/GYN physicians from the Palmetto Health-USC Medical Group and designed to make gynecological care more accommodating for younger patients. “Janice Bacon [a former OB/GYN professor at the School of Medicine] thought that teens would be more comfortable going to a GYN doctor if the office environment was set up just for them, no adult patients in the waiting room — that sort of thing,” says Judy Burgis, professor and chair of obstetrics and gynecology at the School of Medicine. The clinic began in 1989 as the Teen Initiative. The mission? To help fulfill the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists recommendation that teens see a gynecologist between the ages of 13 and 15. The challenge is that most teen girls are apprehensive about going to a GYN physician, Burgis says, and, on the practical side, need a place that’s open when school lets out. On Teen Clinic afternoons, appointments
are
made only for patients ages 10 to 21, and longer appointment times are allotted to foster more discussion with the doctor. “So we see only younger patients on these two afternoons, and we spend a lot of time with them and give them more individualized teen care,” Burgis says. Many of the clinic’s patients experience issues with menstrual cycles, often resulting in missed school days. Contraceptives can often make their lives better, Burgis says. Others present with infections, ovarian cysts or other disorders of puberty or pelvic pain that need medical attention. Still others need to be checked for sexually transmitted diseases or request guidance on birth control. “About 47 percent of high school students report being sexually active, and we know from data in other countries that the more education teens have, the lower sexually transmitted disease and pregnancy rates are,” says Burgis. “Teen pregnancy rates in the U.S. are declining, but the battle isn’t over. We try to give them as much education and accurate information as possible.” T
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QUORUM BUSTING HOW BACTERIA COMMUNICATE AND WHAT’S BEING DONE TO STOP IT ish swim in schools, birds of a feather flock together — and, of course, people form communities. But working together isn’t the exclusive province of man and beast. The tendency toward teamwork can be seen even among microscopic organisms like bacteria. Welcome to the world of quorum sensing and the research of microbiologist and associate dean for research in the Arnold School of Public Health Alan Decho. Along with collaborators Brian Benicewicz and Chuanbing Tang of USC’s Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, Decho is eavesdropping on the communication between microorganisms in the hope of learning something about infection and resistance that could benefit the rest of us. “Most people think of bacteria and other microbes as solitary organisms, floating around in water, but not all microbes do that,” says Decho. In fact, when one bacterium initially encounters another, a survival of the fittest situation ensues with each bacterium secreting potentially lethal chemical compounds to kill off the other. Humans harness these chemicals as antibiotics. Over the past few decades, however, scientists began to notice something curious: the chemical warfare between bacteria doesn’t continue indefinitely. Rather, the antagonists eventually start to team up. “Initially, what we have is a lot of different organisms battling it out, but over time they can develop good relationships with each other,” Decho says. After the early phases of chemical warfare, microbes continue to release a variety of biologically synthesized molecules, but the intent is now to communicate. It’s a complex process, but the end result is the production of something called of a biofilm, which Decho says can have a consistency similar to mucous and which can be found just about anywhere we find life. “Dental plaque on our teeth is one example. We also have biofilms lining our gut,” Decho says. “We have biofilms living on the surface of our skin, mostly in the grooves of our skin. And out in the ocean they are everywhere, on the surfaces of rocks and sediment.” Living within a gooey community of biomolecules imparts survival advantages to each of the microbes that are part of the biofilm, and not just in the form of an extra structural barrier. The microbes within the biofilm infection can also generate antibiotic-degrading enzymes and extrude them into the space between cells, where they lie in wait for antibiotics. “They’re essentially producing a minefield for antibiotics,” Decho says. “When antibiotics seep into the biofilm, they hit these enzymes and get chopped up, so they can never reach the cell. Thus, the biofilm allows the cells within it to become very resistant.” In our war with infection-causing bacteria, weakening or eliminating biofilm-imparted resistance could offer a new tactic. One experimental approach Decho and his collaborators are trying involves using nanoparticle chemical “sponges” to absorb the chemicals that microbes produce during quorum sensing, effectively jamming the chemical signals they use to communicate. And that disruption is really the key, according to Decho. “An infection-producing biofilm would suddenly go from being an organized army to just a bunch of disorganized individuals with weapons,” he says. “They’re not coordinated and could be destroyed more easily. Or they might even destroy themselves.”
T
"Similar bacteria tend to cluster together in groups, and are likely communicating and coordinating their activities with each other. There is likely communication between nearby groups as well. This helps to regulate community activities." - ALAN DECHO
VOL. 27, NO.6 19
CAROLINA SYSTEM EFFECT ROAD TRIP
USC SUMTER: PIPELINE AND PARTNERSHIP BY CRAIG BRANDHORST
“I love the term pipeline,” says Michael Sonntag. “I also love the word partnership.” As dean of USC Sumter for the past two and half years, Sonntag has been actively exploring ways to provide more Sumter-area students with access to higher education and more avenues for those students to enter the workforce upon completion of their degree. His leadership team has picked the brains of business leaders from companies like Continental Tire and medical device manufacturer Becton Dickinson, as well as representatives from local government and the local school district. The idea for an early college program, however, was something he first started contemplating at the University of Maine at Presque Isle, where he served as chief academic officer before coming to Sumter. He was excited to learn that USC Sumter was already contemplating something similar when he arrived, and key players quickly got on board. Through the new program, which USC Sumter launched in conjunction with Crestwood High School last summer, qualified high school students can complete an associate degree on the college campus while simultaneously obtaining their high school diploma. Students who meet USC Sumter’s standard admissions requirements take two courses on campus, including a section of University 101, the summer after their sophomore year. They then take a full 12-hour course load each of the next four semesters, plus another six hours between their junior and senior year. They progress through the program as a cohort but take classes alongside regular USC Sumter students, and they’re held to the exact same standards — even if they don’t always look the part. “I use the word ‘kids’ because they really do look young,” says Sonntag. “But you see them walking around campus with these big smiles and you know they’re excited. One of them told one of our faculty members, ‘You know, I don’t even think of myself as a high school student anymore.’” And how are these smiling students performing once they’re in the classroom? “We had 13 students start last summer and all 13 students finished the first year, all 13 of them are coming back for year two,” Sonntag says. “You don’t see retention rates like that ever.” Of course, the students have a huge incentive to stick with the program: Because it’s funded through lottery assistance, their only expense is their books. “They have to be prepared for the work, they have to have the right attitude — it’s real college work — but we’re saving these kids or their parents two years’ worth of tuition, and they come out at the other end with an associate degree,” says Sonntag. “And these credits will transfer — to Columbia and also into Palmetto College.” T
The Other End of the Pipe
Internships are nothing new. At the Sumter facility of multinational medical device manufacturer Becton Dickinson, however, interns have traditionally arrived via the local technical college, not USC Sumter. Until now. “We’ve tried to recruit students for some of the more engineering-based jobs from the technical college, but we didn’t have anything for management,” says Christopher Floyd, lead business unit coordinator at BD Sumter. “But at a business this large, each type of degree has a place.” Thanks to a new partnership with the university, the company brought on its first USC Sumter intern, Adam Fenno, this May and gave him a specific project — to help the company meet a new regulatory requirement by putting all of their preventative maintenance books for two different departments into a documentation control process. In the process, the intern earned a position with the company. “If we can give a student the opportunity to complete a task and still be hungry for more, that’s what we want,” says Floyd. “Adam demonstrated that time and time again. We want to encourage that kind of hunger and creativity. We definitely saw the value of the program, and we want to continue this partnership moving forward.”
ENDNOTES If you’ve headed west down Greene Street lately, past the Darla Moore School of Business, you haven’t made it very far. Jackhammers, orange barrels, ripped up road — the signs of progress stop you dead in your tracks. In the not-so-distant future, however, the stretch of pavement below Assembly Street will become one of the most inviting corridors in downtown Columbia. Over the next few years, phases 2 and 3 will bridge the railroad tracks and, one day, connect the burgeoning area to the Congaree River. "The Greene Street and Foundation Square project is an acknowledgement that the quality of the city's built environment matters," says Derek Gruner, university architect. "The experience of being a Columbia citizen or a university member will be elevated by these spaces that provide shaded sidewalks, bike lanes, traffic calming, green spaces, environmentally sustainable design, event space and fountains."
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1: Potential vision for new riverfront park. 2: Greene Street approaching Foundation Square. 3: Aerial map of completed Greene Street corridor. Cover: Early rendering of Foundation Square from the Sasaki master plan for the Columbia campus.